Some great prose in this one: "industrially incendiary cruelties" and "meat sauce of sins, scenes, and sentences" in particular jump off the page 🤝 Can't wait for ghost stories in Part Two on the commute home!
As always, you find a nice angle on Life and Art and their interplay. I think the object lesson of Morrison and the 27 Club is a paradox: that chemical transcendence enlivens and enriches life, even as it subtracts it. Would be curious to read a take on Leonard Cohen someday - he's a poet-musician of a very different stripe, but his verses have a deep and singular magic too.
I love the observations here, especially the line about how, if you die at 27, you never have time for doubts, and about how so much of making art means letting your "unconscious take the steering wheel." But I think the most profound thing you say here about Morrison is that he channeled for the art, not the audience. Seems like today's writers, artists, and musicians are all too aware of that audience because of social media. That makes it a lot harder to unleash the unconscious.
Some great prose in this one: "industrially incendiary cruelties" and "meat sauce of sins, scenes, and sentences" in particular jump off the page 🤝 Can't wait for ghost stories in Part Two on the commute home!
As always, you find a nice angle on Life and Art and their interplay. I think the object lesson of Morrison and the 27 Club is a paradox: that chemical transcendence enlivens and enriches life, even as it subtracts it. Would be curious to read a take on Leonard Cohen someday - he's a poet-musician of a very different stripe, but his verses have a deep and singular magic too.
I love the observations here, especially the line about how, if you die at 27, you never have time for doubts, and about how so much of making art means letting your "unconscious take the steering wheel." But I think the most profound thing you say here about Morrison is that he channeled for the art, not the audience. Seems like today's writers, artists, and musicians are all too aware of that audience because of social media. That makes it a lot harder to unleash the unconscious.
I'm only a casual Doors fan and had no idea that Morrison's father was that particular soldier. Talk about a real life Greek myth.
A few mistakes here.
It is not confirmed that Morrison died of an overdose. There was no autopsy.
Also, Danny Sugerman is erroneously referred to as Danny Superman.